I find myself coming back to this video often before tracking drums... It's kind of like a reference book that you keep on a shelf, but keep on a playlist on KZfaq instead... Thank you for making these videos!

I think, this is one of the most important videos about mixing out there so far, because it actually shows what is done before you start mixing at all. Often the starting material we home studio owners have, is so different from what Warren's (and other "big guys") got, that the tipps and tricks just won't work properly. What I do is, I try to emulate what's shown here in a DAW session I call "Tracking". Think of the tracks you've got (directly recorded with your audio interface) as the musicians just then playing. Then use EQs, Compressors and if you want Saturation Plugins to get the tracks sound good (you probably have to do a lot more tweaking to master the challenge of the room, the mics and the musicians you've got ;). Then print every single track, open a new session and start mixing. I think you will find that not only most mixing videos, like the great ones Warren does, are much easier to follow, but also that mixing itself gets a lot easier. What do you think?

Thanks very much!! Glad you enjoyed it!! Have a marvellous time recording and mixing, many thanks Warren

wow my favorite drum setup ive ever seen.. i called out taht subkick right when i was listening/watching it.. ive always wanted to use one and now i know how to use a mic top try and aim to recreate that thump in a clean and useful way... thank you for that man! cheers from sw Wa state usa

Warren, you are great! Love these videos. Such a great reference to compare what the big boyz do at the big time studios with what we are doing at our home studios. Hearing samples of how each of these tracks sound soloed and how you have things set up to do it is just so great. Thanks!

I understand why you love recording at that studio, killer drum sound from the start all it need is little tweaks and like you said ... This is ROCK n ROLL. Again thanks for been so generous with your knowledge

Big thanks for not only showing us techniques, mixing tips etc. but also just general good studio etiquette.

Thank you for this! A wonderful video because you show everything from mic placement to signal path processing. Then actually hearing each element separately is golden! This is the kind of stuff I am most interested in but which very few people outline in such detail.

This video is awesome!! I stopped it a thousand times along the way and took notes.. THANK YOU THANK YOU!!

Great sounding room. Makes all the difference in the world

Just came across this. I had the pleasure of working for Allen Sides when he owned the Studio and remember Albhy Galuten producing the first Jellyfish record in studio 3 with JJP engineering. That room has such an awesome vibe, not to mention Studio 2 was great as well when Los Lobos recorded there. Really miss those days and would love to do a project there sometime.

That mono room alone could make for the entire drum sound. So aggressive and clear

Mate! Fantastic video!!! This is going on repeat at least 3 or 4 times to take it all in. That drum sound was awesome, even with YT audio!

Another great video, thanks Waren! That studio is ridiculous.

Warren, you're killing me with these videos... This one has everything: a historical element (the studio), gear porn, technique, mindset/vision,... It's educational, it's entertaining, it's detailed, and it sounds great... Many thanks! When it comes to tracking drums, I've only ever done it with a very limited number of microphones and I/O, and I've found that in those cases, distance is my friend, especially on the snare mic: about 8 inches from the head or more (pointing at the center and with the mic being as close to a 90º angle to the head as possible) gives me a richer, fuller, more defined and natural tone, without the "choking" effect and resonances that I usually get when getting closer. I pick up a little more of the crack of the snares as well, but not in an obnoxious way, which really helps in the mix. The only downside is that it requires more work to manage the bleed, but with a good drummer and some creativity, it's no problem at all.

you are amazing mr, warren. giving every thing without leaving an inch

Very helpful. Love ALL your videos Warren!! Thank you for sharing.

One of your best videos Warren, Thanks!

Awesome tips and mood as always! My set: D112 inside and Cascade Fathead sub on kick, Beyerdinamics M160 top + SM57 bottom on snare, Cascade M39 on hihat, AKG D5 on rack toms, AKG 5600 on floor tom, Neumann KM 184 overs ORTF, Gefell M930 facing the kit and Cascade Fathead on my bathroom near the studio, with assimetric shape and a bathtub to breake the bad resonance.

I just love these videos man I love em. I mean even if I don't have all those amazing mics. the idea and way you do things really make me think of how to improve my method.

Thanks so much for the videos.. You're getting really nice, and utterly useful drum sounds.. Options are great to have come mix time, yet the sound is great with everything in, as well..

Warren is such a cool guy, the way he comments vocal bleed into the mono room mic "...but who cares, it's r n'r" and with that evil grin. That's epic. :)

Warren, after years of trying different mics and recording in a few studios with expensive German condensers for overheads, I actually love the Avantone CR-14 ribbons. They are a little more lively than a Coles but still has that smooth response. They are a fraction of the cost of Coles and in every room I've tried them, they are a perfect balance between the slightly rolled off ribbon sound with a bit more crispness in the response. I also, normally, situate the mics more in front of the kit looking towards the cymbals, a la Steve Albini. This eliminates drums getting too dominant. I tend not to use overheads as a "capture the whole kit" thing but to get cymbals, mostly. For me, that's what the room mics are for. HOWEVER, if the client wants that kind of overhead sound, I am obliged to offer that option. Thanks for the tutorial. It's nice to see a piece of history being used today!

Awesome video..!! I've leaned so much from you, can't thank you enough... 🙌🙏. Please more drum videos....!! Thanks, happy new year. Cheers from Tampa, fl.

Love this Studio.. Great video Warren

Really great video. Thanks Warren

indeed, awesomeness is in the room. and i think i really enjoy this kinda -in-the-studio-video, exploring recording studio, compare to all other vids. great great great job

That 414 sounds absolutely killer with the compression. Nothing revs my engine like a mono room mic.

Great vid as usual Warren. What an awesome place to record!

I really liked this video. At first I was like "that snare sounds terrible" (and it does when you solo it) but then when you brought in the overheads I understood completely why you had chosen that sound. Thanks a lot!

Wow I’m blown away by the sound coming out of that Neve console. Amazing what money can do 😁

Always enjoy your videos. I love my d112 as much at it tends to be vilified now a days. And you can throw it at people who piss you off and it will never break. And again it's always great seeing Mr Paul Ill in your sessions.

I dig the 414 in the room. I recorded with a producer once who used an old stereo cassette "boom box" as the room mic because the sound was so compressed going through it's small condensers. Great video man! Thanks again.

I do work on my home studio, and I have not any room for such amount of mics and room for the sound to expand so much, of course, which is fundamental to obtain a certain kind of sound. Thus I mainly work with samples, except when I record something jazzy or latin(y) in which I do want listeners to feel the Life into the instruments. Brushes and percussions are always recorded in stereo. To do that, I do use 2 U67 vintage, which I setup as omni, in order to capture the small reflections from the room, that returns a kind of "liveness". Once made, I move the pair on another room, I playback the recorded track, and I do record the reverberations are forming in the other room ( my Living :) ) Then I put everything on phase, (keeping the small delay is forming), and I can dose the enviroment. Thus I can udjust the ratio: closed/far room And I'm pretty happy with the obtained results, just because my work conditions.

Great sounds and sights as always!

You got me subscribed and signed up at your mailing list. Wonderful videos, tips and knowledge. Thanks for sharing! Cheers from Brazil!

Una belleza de lugar... Una belleza de equipamiento y muy bien aprovechado... Espectacular!!

I'm glad to hear that you love CMV 563s, they're one of my very favorite mics as well! :D

You're the man Warren! I work at United Sound Systems Recording Studios (Detroit, MI.). I'm looking to capture drum sounds very soon in our studio for drum replacement and sound packs. We don't have a console anymore, so I'll be doing a lot of ITB shaping. We do have some Neve pres and a few other gems, but nothing major. However, I'm still moving forward with the project because it will add to the skill set and plus...it's fun! lol #Salute

Love seeing my friend Danny on the kit!!!

Hey Warren. Hope you're having a great day. I would give anything to work in a room like that! Great video. You know, I use Addictive and Superior drummer quite a lot, triggered from a Roland kit. And after I get the drum tones I want, and commit them to wave files, I use some of those techniques in the mix... as if it were a live kit I recorded. I use the over compressed channel for power, do some mild EQ adjustments for clarity in the mix etc... I think people forget sometime, that just because they use drum sample software, they were recorded just like you did here, with a ton of work and mic placements, eq adjustments etc... but they are not a one size fits all! You can do everything to them as you can with real live drums to enhance the listening experience and the mix. As always, you've done a great job in this video showing some great tips and tricks! I'm going to steal your line and say "Have a marvellous time recording" Warren. Thank you for taking the time to do these videos! Have a great day!

This is great!!! Thanks Warren!!!

What a room! And I recognize a lot of your techniques from my own experience. Incredible sounds as usual, Warren! I am also a stickler for in-phase overheads during tracking, but I was wondering if you line the phase up for your tracks in post. I've tried such things as sliding the shell mics in phase with the overheads, kicking the room tracks out further for pre-delay, all in the DAW edit window. Thanks for some of the best studio information on the Internet!

Well done! Those are killer sounding drums. It must be big fun to track them in that room.

Iv used Superior Drummer 2 for year now. I think i am almost ready to get back into real drums I just needed alot of time to learn what great drums sound like.

Great videos warren . i am always learning a new trick every video .

For our inside of the Kick drum we use a contact mic just for the thump and to move some low end air .Then we blend it with a D12 and parallel compress.Also thats what we have to use .

Awesome. Thanks Warren.

DAmn good video... I got alot of new ideas for making hiphop tracks

Super helpful! Thanks.

Very nice thank you Warren!

Warren, it's hard to believe how many amazing videos you crank out! I loved that you let us hear each mic seperately, before showing how all together sound! One question: On the high room mics, the kick is coming from left, and on the low room mics, the snare is coming from the right. Why is that, I thought the mics are positioned at the same distance from the snare? Many thanks! David

I have a pretty elaborate setup with our house kit (17 mics), but its in a smaller area than I'd like. To give my drums more depth and feel like they are in a bigger space, I put 4 PZM mics on stools all round the kit as far away as I can. The PZM's being omni can make the kit sound alive with minimal phase issues and I can really embrace the bleed from the whole band playing together, live on the floor. I also store all of my guitar collection (each standing on end) wrapped around the back side of the drum kit about 3' off the ground. This created a handy storage area for the 50+ guitar collection and great diffusion for the smaller space left for the kit. If I need anything more than that, Blackbird is 1/2 mile away.

Beautiful!!!!!!

Great sounding

Awesome video!

Love your shirt!

Cool set up on the drums😄

I’m using a D112 MKII on kick, sm58 on snare top (gonna experiment with that and a akg D330BT as well on the top), Sennheiser e 604 on toms, sm57 6 feet in front of the kit using the snare to measure trying to capture the entire kit, and 1 rode m5 on top of the kit. I’ve been watching a bunch of your vids and other peoples videos so I’m just experimenting. Recording drums in my living room where there is a little bit of reverb instead of my bedroom where it’s pretty dead.

such great info. keep up the great work dude.

awesome video as always :)

Great hard hitting modern british drum sound!

Kick drum sounds magical! :)

another one is an sm57 just laid on the floor in front of the it (maybe 6 feet) with a plastic dustbin up side down covering it. again, compress all buttons in / or to taste and blend or use as an effects mic. greetings from England by the way!

Awesome! Thank you! Greetings from Poland :-)

Warren! Love your videos man! My 2 cents on drums, favorite kick mic at the moment: sennheiser e902 placement: halfway in pointed at the beaters. Be interested to hear your thoughts if you try it out.

One of the best man , with the best videos and huge honesty. I have a question tho, when you played the full mix , it sounded like the snare close mic was kinda out phase with the ambient mics and the OH`s, is it me or its realy possbile ? :)

Love what you did with those Low room mics and boosting the 60hz. Sounds huge! Question: I've heard many producers say not to use overheads for cymbal mics, but rather to space them evenly across the whole kit using a tape measure to beat phasing issues, exactly as you've done. But I have always really liked using my overheads directly over the cymbals to give me a bit more control over there blend in the drum mix, why is this frowned upon? I am also using 2 KM84s for overheads so that may be part of the difference.

I like to put a mic in figure 8 between the kick n snare (drummers side) and compress it heavily all buttons in. If you get it in the right place you get a great balance of snare bottom and beater attack. it sounds cool blended in or as an effect in a bridge etc.

This is wildly handy! You've asked for questions, so here's one regarding the overheads: Each microphone is equidistant from the center of the snare, but how do you measure the proportional distance from the cymbals, snare, and overheads between each other? Sorry, I'm having a hard time even articulating the question. I'll try to word it a different way. Essentially each microphone is 46.5" from the center of the snare, but how do you decide how high or low to place the overheads wherever they lie on that 46.5" imaginary spherical-circumference?

Hi Warren! I working really lot to developing my drum recording knowledge. My big dilemma is which route I choose. First is how I use my UA Apollo Twin with eight Yamaha 01V96 digital console preamp connected on ADAT and using Unison 610B preamp on overheads or rooms and some UAD plugins (Pultec's, 1176's) on tracking, but this is only ten channels with lot of compromises. The other way is using my friend's Soundcraft SI Impact, which is a club category digital console with 32x32 USB card but works only in 48kHz sample rate, and I can to use even sixteen or more channels, which is more than enough. Recently i tested a lot of microphones on drums with different positions and I get useful experiences about drum miking. My favourite kick drum microphone is Shure Beta52A, but I also like AKG D112, and a question for me how I use D112 for kick in and use Beta52 before reso head like fet47 position, or only use ms Shure, now my favourite position is when this mic is in the kick and the back end positioned the same way like reso head. On Snare my absolute favourite is SM57, recently in about 15 degree than snare head, this makes the best top-end. On snare bottom sometimes I use SM57 or my favourite live guitar mic, Sennheiser e609, this is really nice. But I heard about an intresting and amazing thing: use PZM mic under the snare: this makes nicer sound like close snare bottom microphone and give some kick drum attack. On hi hats my absolute favourite is my vintage brass colured AKG C535EB condenser stage vocal microphone. This have a really nice top end and a little bit silky washed sound which I think come from the transformer and given by age. On toms i recently use Audix stage microphones, D2 and D4, this have a really nice tom sound and have a good bleed supression, but sometimes I get some Sennheiser MD421 or another D112 for floor tom, D112 on floor is really punchy. On overheads I use my pair of Neumann KM184's, I think this microphone is like a beautiful woman in a little black dress: solidly elegant. Recently I bought a pair of Gefell UM70S and I was done these M7 capsules reskinned by Thiersch, I would like to using in the future that on this situations how I need a bit punchy and more fat drum sound, and when I needs beautiful cymbals like jazz i prefer KM's. On room i use sometimes Rode NT5 pairs in A/B or/and ORTF configuration, but in the future I would like to use the another pair which not working on overheads. I have one cheap Royer R121 clone ribbon microphone, this is interesting for mono overhead for making special drum sound. Thanks: Ferdinánd :)

Great mate as always, ill be doing some sample drums and would be interested to see what you think, like your recent downloads, lets talk about soon, thanks for being so possitive and sharing your ideas for all, best Gaz

Awesome video!!!!

Thanks for the great video. Interesting choice of the Coles 4038. Ever try a RCA 44 in that position. The low end you get from that is amazing. Picked that up from John McBride...

Fantastic video Warren! Thanks for allowing us to enter the 'inner sanctum' of the recording world. It's often so hard to see how the "pro's" go about things in the recording studio. What is your 'usual' measurement (in inches or cm) from the U67 overhead to the snare drum?

I record in my home studio. Very limited on mics. D6 on kick, home made sub kick, shot gun shell condensers for overheads, audix i5 and sm57 on snare, sm57's on rack toms, beta 52 on floor tom, sm7B on hihat sometimes.

Thanks for this. I was digging deep in the PLAP archives. Any suggestions or plans to do a video on how to drums as shells? Not sure that is the saying but when cymbals are done separately.

When I was recording a demo with my band we actually had more or less 4 mics: a SM57, an AKG D5 and a small Olympus LS-5 Stereo Recorder. We recorded in a small, really not good sounding rehearsal space, but somehow we got it to work in the mix. It was a very interesting and challenging experience, but it made a hell lot of fun! Greetings from Germany, Fabian

a ribbon mic looking at the snare form behind the drummers shoulder parallel compressed in gives some nice meat to the snare.

here's the best way to handle hh bleed on the snare...have the drummer raise the hats a couple of inches. also use a shorter mic stand so you can mic the snare from under the hats. that way you can use the 180 rejection from the 57 to your advantage...Warren you rock!

I use EZDrummer into Logic at home. I slap on a tiny bit of distortion on the whole kit to make it sound more roomy and less tippy tappy. I have two tracks of EZDrummer and maybe a third one mixed very low of a midi drumkit to fatten it up like a 909. To give some punch to the kick and snap to the snare :) . I'm happy with the results.

Very nice sounds Warren...The mix of mics on the kick work well! Often use a D-12 or an RE-20 in with a ribbon out when possible. Picked up a D-6 recently to try out, and a TLM-49 for the outside. Like U-87s on toms, 451 or KM-84 on the hat, re-201 on snare sometimes. Have you heard the CAD M-179 on toms? There's a shootout on Gearslutz that really impressed me. So cheap you can beat 'em with a stick :-)

Hey Warren! Awesome, detailed video. I really wish I had this while still in Uni a couple years ago! I've got a question if I may: how would I go about accurately capturing individual cymbals for a more heavy type rock album? Whenever I listen to big name recordings the cymbals amd hihats are so precisely placed in the stereo field and cut through, while mine kind of float around and only bleed through the OH. Despite micking cyms individually I end up not having to use them as the OH are already filling up everything, especially with hats. Any advice?

any suggestions or advice on how to get great sounding drum kit in a small room? i've killed with absorbers of different types (owens corning, self made 8 pound rock wool panels) and even misshaped the room as best i could without losing too much space. obviously i wont be getting any 'John Bonham-esque' sounding drums, but are there tricks to getting a balanced, great sounding kit? thanks! love your videos

Great video. Question: I have 2 pencil overhead mics, are they supposed to be behind, or front of the kit? Or just sideways of the kit pointing at the snare? Thanks a lot! You are a legend Warren!

Hey Warren. when you played just the room mics that are near the ground, Man they sound good.

Great Stuff my Friend.👍👍👍👍👍

Great video Warren .. Why do you have the high hate combo mics at the bell ? wouldn't that create more bleed ? The bottom room mics sound amazing by themselves .

Hey warren. One thing, on tracking, specifically on snare and kick do you eq before compression or after compression?

Everyone watching checked their phones at 6:04 , including me haha. Amazing video and great room. Thanks!

Warren, nice video. When you assemble this complex mix, how do you reassemble the image of the drums. Are you trying to create a stereo image of the drum set or more of a singular mono image in one location? Do you use the overheads or room mics to serve as a starting or reference point for the image? For grins gave you ever compared a 14-16 channel set of tracks like this to a simple 3-5 mic setup like Earthworks mics are proponents of?

Thanks for your great videos! And what a nice studio this is. Could you shortly explain your idea/purpose of tracking with compression on kick and snare? To even out the hits? Doing something to the attack/transient?

Great video! I recently switched from an RE-20 on the outside kick to the Yamaha SubKick and absolutely love it there. Ever tried it?

Thanks for showing the secrets !

Could you do a video describing a Neve console like this one? Like you did with your SSL console

Another awesome video, Warren. Do you do anything to check the phase between the three kick mics?

Dude you rock!

Killllllller vid, man!

i need so much to learn....

Hi Warren as per usual great video! One thing that I've missed or is different than your drum stuff in the past, but I don't remember you using a lot of outboard EQ as your doing here. Is this just trying something different, limitation of the board or I could just be getting old! As always thanks for the time you put in to help pass on your knowledge.